The other week when the power was out for five days, my in-laws watched the dogs for us. They love it there, having lived there for a year while we were getting settled after moving back from California. When the power was on and the heat turned up and the water running again, we rounded up the dogs and ended up coming home with a bag of peanut butter cookies.

My mother-in-law’s thoughtfulness always makes me smile.

Soft in the middle, crisp around the edges and fatty with shortening and peanut butter. They last for days and are done in an hour. They were a welcomed snack in the midst of the post-outage chaos of returning back to an empty fridge and a pile of laundry.

I’ve moved the kitchen around a bit. Cleaned it up, took the cake stand with old licorice wrappers to the basement. The herbs have been relocated to the spare bedrooom-cum-office. It’s usually warmer up there. More sunlight. More space to grow, we’re hoping.

This leaves the little nook for me. I put a chair in front of the window and took advantage of the view. Post and rail. Snowfall. A flimsy excuse for a dog fence butting up on a rain gutter. Chickens in the distance. Snowfall. I made some tea yesterday morning, sharped a #2 pencil and set to work.

The dogs at my feet, I paid some bills. The dogs at my feet, I shared a peanut butter cookie split for ways. Licked an old set of stamps and pressed to an envelope to no avail. Got a glue stick from the drawer we keep some scattered poker chips. Snuck it out to the mailbox in my pajamas and an overcoat.

This week, I got new stationery to break out. It’s from Basic Invite, the company we used for our wedding invites. This time, I just wanted some little notes. Quick and small, they come in handy. Like when I sent my best friend, Carissa, a little souvenir from our high school days. Scribbled in my poor penmanship, I ended it just at the bottom margin with “X, Brett”.

Basic Invite was our wedding supplier for its versatility. We worked with a designer to make our own. But for these, I chose a light blue called “sea spray”. Accents of dark grey for the font and cream envelopes (but 40 options to choose from!). Unlimited possibilities, but I like the warm palette I chose. It pairs well with black tea and peanut butter cookies and yellow pencils and snow days, I think.

And cheers to more notes. We’ve just hit March. We’ve a thousand opportunities to say “hi” to loved ones left for the year.

My flock is without a leader and I am without a friend. We had to put our rooster down. He was sick; nothing we could do. It was good to hear it from a vet. I didn’t feel as guilty then.

He wasn’t getting better. His breathing was ragged. He went lame, shuffling his mass across the straw when I found him under a two-by-four. He crowed once when I grabbed him up. He fell asleep on the way to the vet. I was in the backseat, saying my sorries and my goodbyes and my rationalizations. Nolan drove us, our eyes meeting in the rearview mirror. The rooster nodded off, his comb now bleeding, poking out of an airhole I had cut into the side with a dull screwdriver.

I wasn’t in the room when he died. We sat in the car. I needed air. It may be silly, but I’ve never handled these things well.

I am without a friend. Our flock is now at 26. This is the last photo I took of him. “He was a good boy” is the maxim we’re repeating. The small eulogy for his small life. He was thoughtful and gentle for a rooster. He was malnourished when we got him and his body grew to its limits quickly. He wobbled under his own weight. He was patient. He was vigilant. He sometimes, confused, brooded in the nesting boxes. He was as tall as Milo. He went peacefully and is buried by the creek bed. He was my first rooster I ever owned. I will miss him. The morning is no longer punctuated with his trumpeting. I will miss him.

I’ve always loved picnics. Or, more accurately, the idea of them. I can’t count how many times I’ve been on one. The best being when my husband surprised me with a picnic in Paris. We still have the blanket we smuggled back in our luggage.

To disconnect. To butt up against a tree and read a book. To sit in the sun, not minding the bugs floating around your thermos. To smoke and ash in the wind. That’s comfort to me. That’s the moment I want to recreate this Spring. Adding it to our to-do list immediately.

Where did the month go? How often are these tropes going to pervade my writing - the week that blurred by, the nondescript happenings of an otherwise boring week. I blame the month. January is cruel. It is muddy. It is frozen and I freeze with it.

I sat in bed a lot this week. Warmed by an electric pad my parents got us for Christmas. I sat in bed. Nearly finished a book. Got new reading glasses. Listened to a tree break off in the distance. The noise worried the dogs. They didn’t sit still for an hour. Maybe it was a deer, crashing an antler against the steel sheets of ice that blanket the creekbed.

Hoof prints in the morning, they leave no sign of themselves. I do not mind the company. It gets lonely here. I take care of 30 animals every day. I could still care for a few more, still worry about a few more, still sink into the background thought of the quicksand of commitment I love so much.